Siege of Stone Read online

  At first it was a game, and Maxim enjoyed duping the needy people. But as his plan grew more complex, he realized he had stumbled on a way to undermine the foundations of the nobles, the duma members, the arrogant wizards—and especially Thora. The entire city was dry tinder, and he supplied the spark.

  The revolt had been his finest hour. He watched the slaves unleash the combat animals, rile up the arena warriors, and run wild through the streets. Maxim had felt an erotic thrill to see his plans come to fruition, aided by the charismatic sorceress Nicci, who truly believed in the goal.

  Maxim had succeeded, and Thora had been deposed, but he fled Ildakar, not wanting to become a victim of its internal collapse. Adding more fire so he could be sure the great city would crumble, he undid the unique petrification spell he had developed, so that the countless soldiers in the ancient siege could awaken. How he wished he could simply sit back to watch events unfold!

  Instead, he was alone and miserable in these swamps, though the misery was of his own making. Sitting on his moss-covered log in front of the snapping campfire, Maxim used his gift to dispel the water from his clothes and cleanse himself so that he felt more comfortable. Yes, he had the power to control his environment. He didn’t have a lavish, silk-covered bed in the grand villa, but he would survive. In fact, he thought of himself as the king of this entire swamp, a domain of mud and bugs and scaly creatures.

  At least he was a king, and this was a new beginning.

  Uprooting a green willow stick from the edge of the hummock, Maxim probed in the sluggish water and found a large bottom-feeding fish. With a release of his gift, he stopped its minuscule heart. Seconds later, the dead fish floated belly up, within reach. Maxim pulled it out of the water, gutted it, and threaded the willow twig down its mouth so he could roast it over the fire for his dinner.

  He sat in silence listening to the ominous, yet comforting, hum of night creatures. He heard a heavy splash and cracking branches, but knew the large predators wouldn’t bother him—or if they did, they would regret it.

  He watched the fish skin blacken, curl, and slough off, leaving pale meat that clung to the bones. The buzzing whine of bloodsucking insects swept around his head, drawn not to the scent of the roasting fish, but to him. When one of the large gnats bit his neck, he flinched. With an annoyed thought, he conjured his petrification spell and cast it out in waves so that all the flying, biting insects turned to tiny grains of stone and dropped out of the air. Now he would have peace long enough to eat his meal, but more of the pests would soon come to plague him.

  Maxim’s thoughts drifted as he chewed the tender fish. He reminded himself, again, that living with Thora had been worse than this.

  Suddenly, out of the shadowy night thickets, a demon appeared—a woman. Adessa, the morazeth leader. He saw murder in her eyes.

  She had a lithe body, a hard-bitten expression, and a weapon in each hand, a short sword and a dagger. Her exposed skin glistened in the orange light of the campfire, covered not only with branded runes, but with scratches, welts, and swollen insect bites.

  The sight of her was so incongruous, Maxim could only gasp.

  “I’ve been sent to kill you.” Adessa slashed with her short sword, cutting branches and shrubs out of the way so she could lunge toward him.

  Maxim scrambled back from his campfire, blurting out, “What are you doing? I forbid this! I am your wizard commander.”

  She charged toward him without speaking another word. A different warrior might have let out a bloodcurdling yell, but Adessa was a silent killing machine.

  Maxim reacted instinctively, releasing his gift to hurl a ball of fire at her, but the protective morazeth runes made the flames ripple harmlessly aside. She swung her sword at him as he jumped over the log, and the blade struck the mossy wood with a loud thunk.

  She stumbled on a soft divot in the muck, and Maxim sent his magic into the campfire, blowing it up in a surge of flame. The fire didn’t burn the protected warrior woman, but the sheer flash of light and heat made her reel backward, giving him a chance to dart away.

  Maxim plunged across the hummock and sloshed into the muddy water. Adessa leaped right through the surging flames, and her hard and merciless eyes glittered in the sparks of the blaze. “Sovrena Thora has ordered me to kill you and bring back your head. I will not fail.”

  He had seen Adessa fight many times, had watched her defeat Nicci in the ruling chamber after the sorceress challenged Thora, and he had seen Adessa fight her warrior trainees or slay powerful monsters in exhibition bouts in the arena. She seemed to enjoy it. Maxim could never fight her in that way. He wouldn’t survive.

  He lashed out with a fist of wind, tried to knock her backward, but the runes on her skin protected her. Instead, he used the wind to rip branches loose and hurl them at her like clubs. She battered them away, striding toward him as if he were a yaxen caught in a slaughterhouse pen.

  Maxim ran through the watery channel, struggling in the soft mud, sinking up to his knees. Adessa had little difficulty running after him.

  With a burst of magic, he made the water boil behind him. Steam curled up, blinding Adessa. He couldn’t concentrate on manipulating his gift while he fled for his life. He was the wizard commander! He could resist, he could delay her, but he knew that Adessa was relentless, and she was a morazeth. He didn’t know what he could do, where he could hide.

  In the end, the swamp saved him. As Maxim churned through the muddy water, splashing steam and tearing up bushes and vines to throw at her, Adessa kept coming, paying no attention to the other dangers in her environment.

  But two large swamp dragons lay in wait among the reeds, ready to lunge out at unsuspecting marsh deer or wild boars. The armored lizards scuttled toward the morazeth with jaws that could snap a tree in half.

  Maxim sprang onto another hummock and swung himself over a fallen tree while Adessa turned to face the unexpected swamp dragons. She hacked with her sword, and the blade struck sparks off their gray-green hides. The first swamp dragon snapped at her, driving her backward. The second dragon closed in, lunging for her leg, but Adessa jumped up with an angry snarl of her own. She concentrated on fighting the pair of giant lizards.

  Maxim spared only a glance for her as he ran off into the night. He didn’t expect the swamp dragons to kill her—Adessa was too skilled a fighter for that—but the monsters would keep her busy long enough to give him a chance to escape.

  Now that he knew the morazeth was hunting him, he would never let down his guard again.

  CHAPTER 18

  Though the city and the people had betrayed her, Thora still believed that Ildakar was hers. Its wealth, its legend, its very soul and society endured because of her, no one else. She had stood in the ruling tower and surveyed the sweeping buildings, the levels of society from the outer walls to the pinnacle of the plateau. She had ruled it all, protected it all.

  And Ildakar had turned on her. They didn’t appreciate what she had done for them as sovrena, how much they owed her for their very existence. If Utros and his invaders now ransacked Ildakar because the people had no powerful leader, then maybe they would understand. She hoped they would realize their mistake before it was too late.

  The stone walls of the cell surrounded Thora like a throttling grip. She clenched her fist, felt her stiff knuckles and fingers bend according to her command, but the lingering taint of stone was still inside her because of the damnable spell that Elsa, Damon, and Quentin had hurled upon her.

  This small, unlit dungeon deep in the bowels of the bluff left her alone in darkness with her dark thoughts. The door was sturdy wood half a foot thick, mounted to the jamb by three iron hinges riveted with long metal pins that had rusted in place. A heavy deadbolt and an imposing wooden crossbar held the door shut.

  Sovrena Thora knew these dungeons, because over the centuries she had dispatched complaining nobles and restless citizens down here. The incarceration had been for their punishment, sometimes for their own
good, always for the good of Ildakar. And now she was trapped inside, just like one of them.

  Thora was the most powerful sorceress the city had ever produced. Her rule had endured for more than fifteen centuries. With her gift, she should have been able to blast away the door or shatter the stone walls, but wizards had warded these cells long ago. The wooden door and the surrounding stones were chiseled with protective runes that nullified any magical attacks she might unleash, just like the symbols branded onto the combat animals or the morazeth.

  She thought briefly of faithful Adessa and knew the morazeth leader would find and kill the despised Maxim, as ordered. Thora wished she could witness the execution herself, because her hatred for her husband went beyond even her anger at falling from grace and becoming a prisoner now. Thora resolved to be returned to her rightful place in Ildakar by the time Adessa brought back Maxim’s head.

  Alone in the dark cell, she hardened her fist, felt her way across the blackness until she reached the wall where only the vaguest gray blur penetrated the small, barred window in the door. Even the tunnels were unlit, since no one would waste wood or transference magic on burning torches down here. The darkness and gloom were part of Thora’s punishment, but she refused to consider it a punishment. The darkness was her friend now, a place where she could contemplate her situation and make the necessary plans.

  She pressed her palm against the cold, smooth stone. She felt the slime of algae thriving in the shadows, but the sensations were muted, her nerves dulled by the heaviness in her flesh. Her once-sensitive fingers were clumsy as she traced the surface, so she squeezed her hands into hard fists and pounded on the stone block just like the half-petrified soldiers of General Utros continually hammered the city’s outer walls.

  With the muffled thud of the impact, she felt only a distant echo of pain. Curious, she struck with her other hand, harder, but despite her pounding, the solid blocks held fast, her dungeon secure. With one last slam of her knuckles, she stepped back. If she’d been entirely human, she would have battered her hands bloody, but she just felt a dull throbbing, with no real damage done to her hands or to the wall.

  She needed to get out of here. Ildakar would fall without her.

  Maxim was responsible for this current turmoil, but she blamed the treacherous duma members who had overthrown her, convicted her, cast the stone spell, especially the meddling sorceress Nicci, who had been the catalyst for so much disruption. Nicci and her impotent wizard companion had come to Ildakar seeking help, claiming to be nothing more than travelers with a message from the D’Haran Empire, but Thora had suspected them from the beginning. Nicci really wanted to become the next sovrena, to take Ildakar for her own.

  Now the outside sorceress had the city, and Thora was locked in a dungeon while Nicci and the others faced an invincible army from the past. Thora knew that parts of Ildakar remained loyal to her. In the darkness, she envisioned the glorious buildings, terraced gardens, orchards and olive groves that she herself had built. Such a marvelous, perfect city.

  A flash of anger heated her face. By the Keeper, how she wanted Nicci and the other traitors to fail and die horribly! Thora pounded uselessly on the stone wall again.

  She worked her way around the cell and encountered a low stone bench whose front corner had broken away. The jagged edges had been smoothed by the worrying, sweaty, even bloody fingers of other desperate prisoners over the centuries.

  The sovrena had a narrow waist, delicate features, and thin, graceful arms. She never considered herself weak, but she did not rely on physical combat when she fought an enemy. Even though her body felt heavy and dull with lingering stone, she did feel the gift still burning in her heart. She held out her hand and summoned magic, lighting a small flame, which winked into existence like a bobbing candle in her open palm.

  The cheery flame was a bright glimmer of hope, casting a yellow glow around the walls. Now that she could see the details of her confined prison, she noted the spell runes around the doorway. Even though she knew it was useless, she summoned a larger blast of fire and hurled it against the wall, but the flames merely splattered and scorched the slime into a foul-smelling stain. Her fire curled around and ricocheted from one protected wall to another. Thora flinched as the flames lashed back and struck her, too, but her hardened skin protected her before the fire flickered away into a dull glow.

  In wonder, Thora rubbed her arms where the flames had touched her. She felt a tingle, saw a scorch mark on her gray-white skin, but she rubbed it away. There was no damage to herself, nor to the cell. It was no use. She couldn’t get out, no matter how badly the people of Ildakar needed her to save them.

  She spent the next hour hating Maxim for what he had done, for his plan to turn the slaves against the very city that nurtured them and asked only their devotion in return. How those weak people had whined at the injustice, at the hard work they had to perform, without seeing that she herself suffered more for Ildakar than any of them did! No one was more aware of the painful cost of their prosperity than Thora was. The slaves had sore muscles, perhaps, and some even lost their lives, but what was the cost of a few lives to build a civilization that endured for millennia? She despised those who refused to make the sacrifice for the greater good of Ildakar. She had certainly given everything.

  Then Maxim had uprooted the underpinnings of her beautiful society. She’d loved him long ago, and now she couldn’t understand how she had been such a fool. Was she just young and naive, driven by the heat of romance and lust? Over centuries of sharing his bed, then sharing the beds of many others, Thora had learned that lust could be easily satisfied without surrendering her heart, or even common sense. She had wasted the best years of her youth on Maxim, letting him cheat on her, learning of it, forgiving him. She had turned her heart to stone long before any petrification spell, realizing how worthless he was. But the wizard commander was too powerful to be discarded, and she had kept him as her husband, in name only, a figurehead.

  Now, Thora realized she might have overestimated his power. She had been in awe of his great petrification spell, just as she had been instrumental in the great bloodworking that formed the shroud of eternity. She could do it all herself, though. She didn’t need him.

  It was clear that Maxim’s magic must be waning if the stone army had awakened. No wonder he had fled. But perhaps Thora’s gift was also fading. The shroud of eternity had dissipated over the years before they had brought it down entirely. She had been willing to work the final blood magic to restore the shroud permanently, but would it truly have endured?

  The underpinnings of magic had changed, the fundamental rules of the world altered in ways she didn’t understand. Nicci had offered an explanation, although Thora didn’t entirely believe her about what Richard Rahl had done. But, Utros and his army had indeed awakened, and Thora herself had revived from the petrification spell. Yes, much was changing, and she had to use that to her advantage.

  Maxim hadn’t needed magic to create his revolution among the gullible lower classes, to turn those mindless animals, human animals, loose to destroy her city. The rebels followed him, all the while cheering for a foolish dream they had not earned.

  As anger and frustration welled within her, Thora lashed out again, opened her fingers to slam a trembling quake of magic against the wall like a mastiff battering the sides of a cage, but the spell runes deflected her onslaught, and the magic dissipated without any effect.

  Thora sank back and let the flicker of fire die in her hands. She gripped the chipped stone bench and listened to the resounding silence again.

  Darkness made the time pass interminably, and she didn’t know how long she waited before she saw the light brighten in the corridor outside. She heard heavy footsteps, hard boots, the jangle of keys. She heard gruff voices, saw shadows outside the barred window.

  With a scraping sound, the crossbar slid aside as it was removed from its metal rests, followed by a squeak and clank as the deadbolt shot back. The hin
ges protested as two burly guards pushed the door open. Light poured into the cell, making silhouettes of the two men from their torches, but Thora’s eyes adjusted.

  One man, with black stubble on his chin and a helmet askew on his wide head, wore an ill-fitting armored vest taken from the city guard. He obviously wasn’t accustomed to such a uniform. With a pang, she remembered how dashing High Captain Avery had looked when he guarded Thora and also served as her lover. But Avery had been slaughtered in the streets by Mirrormask’s rebels, and Thora knew it was no accident. Maxim—Mirrormask—had done it just to spite her, out of an acid twinge of jealousy.

  These two guards were obviously rebel slaves who now felt important, having taken unearned uniforms. The first man looked at Thora with a hungry sneer and spoke in a blunt voice that made her doubt the extent of his vocabulary. “We’ve come to you again, Sovrena. Are you lonely yet? You might be partly stone, but your skin looks smooth enough. If we spread your legs, would you be soft and wet where it counts?”

  “I doubt you would be hard enough to find out,” she retorted.

  The second guard snickered at the insult.

  Thora continued, “Or maybe I would crush your soft little member, like between two stones.”

  Struggling for words, the gruff guard proved that he did not, indeed, have much vocabulary.

  The second guard carried a tray with hard bread, a cup of water, and a small bowl of gruel. “We brought your food, but if the siege lasts longer, we might have to cut off prisoner rations.”

  Thora wasn’t hungry. Even though this was the third time guards had brought food, she’d never felt the need to eat or drink. The water did nothing for her and the food just felt leaden in her stomach. When the guard approached, she smashed the meal out of his hands, and her hardened fist split the tray down the middle. The guards scampered backward as the broken dishes clattered to the cell floor, uncertain of what she could do.